GREEK ARCHITECTURE.
Buildings of the Doric Order.
THE architecture of Greece has a value far higher than that attaching to any of the styles which preceded it, on account of the beauty of the buildings and the astonishing refinement which the best of them display. This architecture has a further claim on our attention, as being virtually the parent of that of all the nations of Western Europe. We cannot put a finger upon any features of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Persian architecture, the influence of which has survived to the present day, except such as were adopted by the Greeks. On the other hand, there is no feature, no ornament, nor even any principle of design which the Greek architects employed, that can be said to have now become obsolete. Not only do we find direct reproductions of Greek architecture forming part of the practice of every European country, but we are able to trace to Greek art the parentage of many of the forms and features of Roman, Byzantine, and Gothic architecture, especially those connected with the column and which grew out of its artistic use. Greek architecture did not include the arch and all the forms allied to it, such as the vault and the dome; and, so far as we know, the Greeks abstained from the use of the tower. Examples of both these features were, it is almost certain, as fully within the knowledge of the Greeks as were those features of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian buildings which they employed; consequently it is to deliberate selection that we must attribute this exclusion. Within the limits by which they confined themselves, the Greeks worked with such power, learning, taste, and skill that we may fairly claim for their highest achievement—the Parthenon—that it advanced as near to absolute perfection as any work of art ever has been or ever can be carried.
Greek architecture seems to have begun to emerge from the stage of archaic simplicity about the beginning of the sixth century before the Christian era (600 B.C. is the reputed date of the old Doric Temple at Corinth). All the finest examples were erected between that date and the death of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.), after which period it declined and ultimately gave place to Roman.
The domestic and palatial buildings of the Greeks have decayed or been destroyed, leaving but few vestiges. We know their architecture exclusively from ruins of public buildings, and to a limited extent of sepulchral monuments remaining in Greece and in Greek colonies. By far the most numerous and excellent among these buildings are temples. The Greek idea of a temple was different from that entertained by the Egyptians. The building was to a much greater extent designed for external effect than internal. A comparatively small sacred cell was provided for the reception of the image of the divinity, usually with one other cell behind it, which seems to have served as treasury or sacristy; but there were no surrounding chambers, gloomy halls, or enclosed courtyards, like those of the Egyptian temples, visible only to persons admitted within a jealously guarded outer wall. The temple, it is true, often stood within some sort of precinct, but it was accessible to all. It stood open to the sun and air; it invited the admiration of the passer-by; its most telling features and best sculpture were on the exterior. Whether this may have been, to some extent, the case with Persian buildings, we have few means of knowing, but certainly the attention paid by the Greeks to the outside of their temples offers a striking contrast to the practice of the Egyptians, and to what we know of that of the Assyrians.
Fig. 50.—Plan of a small Greek Temple in Antis.
The temple, however grand, was always of simple form, with a gable at each end, and in this respect differed entirely from the series of halls, courts, and chambers of which a great Egyptian temple consisted. In the very smallest temple at least one of the gables was made into a portico by the help of columns and two pilasters (Fig. [50]). More important temples had a larger number of columns, and often a portico at each end (Figs. [50a] and [55]). The most important had columns on the flanks as well as at the front and rear, the sacred cell being, in fact, surrounded by them. It will be apparent from this that the column, together with the superstructure which rested upon it, must have played a very important part in Greek temple-architecture, and an inspection of any representations of Greek buildings will at once confirm the impression.